This invention relates to projection lenses and, more particularly, relates to lenses designed to project an enlargement of an image on a cathode ray tube (CRT) such as a phosphor screen of a television set.
In three tube color projection television systems, it is often not necessary to correct the chromatic aberration of each projection lens due to the limited spectral bandwidth of each CRT, thus simplifying lens design to some extent. If a CRT with a flat face plate is used, then a steeply curved field flattener is often necessary adjacent to the face plate to correct Petzval curvature. Such designs are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,348,081 in which some of the lens elements have aspheric surfaces. In such designs, the field flattener has two disadvantages. Firstly, the steep curve of the field flattener at the edges of the picture means that high angles of incidence occur, rendering aberration correction difficult and producing brightness reduction due to light lost by reflection at the steeply curving surface. Secondly, projection CRT's are usually run at high screen loadings in order to produce an adequately bright picture for viewing. In consequence, the phosphor can be raised in temperature and thermal quenching of the phosphor can occur, reducing picture brightness with increasing temperature. If the field flattener is in optical contact with the CRT face plate, the effective thickness of the face plate varies considerably across the picture, being especially thick at the picture edges. Face plate cooling is then not constant over the picture and, hence, phosphor temperature is not constant over the picture, producing picture brightness variations via thermal quenching. The field flattener may therefore be separated from the face plate and a coolant circulated between them, incurring additional complexity.
In British Patent Application No. 2,091,898A, the optical problem of the field flattener is largely solved by using a cathode ray tube having a face plate which is concave towards the projection lens. The face plate glass may be strengthened, for example, by surface ion exchange, so that it can withstand atmospheric pressure on the concave surface. A single element lens having both surfaces aspherized is used together with a solid prism beam combiner for projecting the images from all three of the CRT's. However, the prism has convex surfaces fitting the concave CRT face plates, rendering cooling difficult.